House of Cards: Season 1Review

Netflix, in a move designed to get ahead of the content creation and production curve, released all 13-episodes of their pedigree-packed series, House of Cards, last Friday.

From executive producers David Fincher (Fight Club, The Social Network), Beau Willimon (The Ides of March) and Eric Roth (Forest Gump, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), House of Cards follows ruthless House Majority Whip Francis Underwood (Kevin Spacey) and his wife Claire (Robin Wright), who set off on a path of vengeance when the President elect reneges on his promise to nominate the Congressman for Secretary of State. Underwood makes revenge his life’s elixir and masterwork; with each painstaking stroke of his brush equaling another “bite out of the whale” that is the Administration. Kate Mara (American Horror Story) co-stars as Zoe Barnes, an equally ambitious young reporter who entangles herself in a Devil’s deal arrangement with Underwood.

An adaptation of Michael Dobbs' novel, which was already a British mini-series, House of Cards presents a biting portrait of the intersection of district and Washington politics, capitalism, and perhaps most-fascinatingly, Claire Underwood’s non-profit/charitable organization, CWI (Clean Water Initiative).

Fincher directs, and establishes an aesthetic, in the first two episodes that, for the most part, carries through the remainder of the series. His fondness for a cooler color palette and murkier visual aesthetic is in sync with the characters leaning towards the dark side, but still awash in shades of grey, psychologically. The word antihero is often, and accurately, used to describe many of our contemporary televised protagonists, and it is fitting here as well. These are well trod themes. It is the execution that distinguishes this series, though, which is just about as good as it gets. The $100 million dollars that Netflix invested in the first two seasons is all right there on the computer screen. The production is as sleek and well executed as any you would expect from this caliber of talent, and a match for most high-end cable programs.

One of the most notable stylistic choices is Spacey’s frequent direct to camera address. House of Cards, like the 1990 British BBC miniseries that it was adapted from, draws heavily from Shakespeare’s tales of Royal intrigue and tragedy. Shakespeare often utilized soliloquies to deliver the character’s inner monologues, to let us know what they were thinking, feeling and plotting. Soliloquies were his means to progress the plot, and have the characters deliver commentary on the world that surrounded them.

The device serves multiple functions here as well. Underwood will often reveal aspects of his inner emotional life and history, or that of the characters he has been interacting with his address. The asides are also utilized to reveal the finer details of his schemes. Often they act as a platform for (what we imagine is) the writer’s sociopolitical commentary, with Underwood as his proxy.

There are those who would call the fourth wall break a “cheat,” still others who may simply feel disconcerted by it. If one gives over to it, though, it can not only support the story, but elevate it. This tale, even more than the BBC version that preceded it, is meant to act as an archetypal exploration. Its landscape is larger than a scathing look at any one political figure or party.

David Fincher directs Kevin Spacey and Kate Mara in House of Cards.

It's easy to say that this is an exploration of the foul side of government; a cynic may suspect that this is simply a heightened dramatization of political business as usual. Indeed, it is that very cultural perception, or understanding, that the series taps into so beautifully. House of Cards is ultimately less about the inner workings of Congress (though there are criticisms and observations that relate specifically to United States in the text) and more about the nature of greed, avarice, ego and the more complex elements of love. In other words: human nature. Now prototypical characters such as Iago, Richard the III and MacBeth are all to be found in Congressman Underwood.

His unrepentant narcissism is balanced with a refreshing pragmatism and ability to get things, by hook or by crook, accomplished. A quality that he shares with his wife. He does what needs doing and is willing to put people out of their misery, and out of his way, with ruthless equanimity. One criticism would be the apparent ease with which he manipulates and dispatches of his pawns. House of Cards does make space for moments of weakness, failure even for the Congressman, but they ultimately act as temporary hiccups on his path to domination.

Underwood invites us into his web with his address, like the spider that is symbolically used in the series. We become co-conspirators in his game and to some degree may find ourselves pulling for this ruthless man, even as we are, in moments, repulsed by him.

His wife’s depiction stands in stark contrast to Underwood’s inner-monologue-out rendering. It is as if two contrasting methods of storytelling, one classic, and one contemporary, converge in this fictional marriage. Claire is revealed primarily via subtext, and a focus on her gestures and actions - both small and large. The camera rests on her as she visually responds to her environment, and in that way we come to know her, as much as we can. We come to know and understand her as much as she allows inner world to be revealed to anyone, including herself. Wright’s depiction of this inscrutable woman is finely tuned, and impossible to turn away from.

When she does speak, the language is inevitably gorgeous. One can see the actors, Spacey in particular, feasting on the dialogue. For as Beau Willimon demonstrates here, and as Underwood says, “words are important.”

Mara’s Zoe Barnes, the recipient of that particular admonishment, plays a young woman dancing the line between becoming a shark, or simply learning to navigate the waters infested with them. Her role is an entryway for the creators to explore and critique journalism, which is again, fair, but well-trod ground at this point.

She opens as something of a conniving would-be homewrecker (little does she know that the Underwood’s have co-created solid, unshakable, if questionable, ground) who has a contentious relationship with her more seasoned female co-worker Janine (Constance Zimmer).

Fortunately the workplace dynamic evolves beyond the initial verbal cat fight stage. The series does read as a bit fantastical when it comes to the actual day-to-day grind of online media (which is not a free for all that includes offices full of throw pillows, much as we may wish it were). It is fair and right to question the state of the Fourth Estate in a series like this, but this storyline feels less fully realized, and painted with broader strokes, than the others. Online verses traditional journalism is no longer the hot topic debate it was 15-years ago, the lines have inevitably and irrevocably blurred.

Kate Mara in House of Cards.

The payoff is Barnes' relationship with Underwood, which tests both her personal and professional integrity. It also serves as a reminder of how easily the press is both manipulated and manipulates. “You're going to say a name over and over, and then watch it come out of the President's mouth,” he tells her. When that indeed happens, it becomes a study in modern media and its ability to, often without thought to the ends it is serving, create reality for itself and us, its consumer.

It is a significant accomplishment when any narrative is able to craft not one, but multiple nuanced and richly drawn characters. It's less that these are portraits of people who are to be both admired and reviled; and more that they are simply, people. Primarily people who I would not welcome into my intimate circle, perhaps. These are forces of nature who were born with the kind of drive and ambition that it takes to reach those heights of power, and that ultimately may deserve a harshly dealt recompense. They are fully realized and enthralling people, nonetheless.

House of Cards presents Washington as seen through Fincher's stylized lens and Willimon's poetic expression of what he views as a “realist’s perspective” on politics. It guides us on an a path that leads to a simultaneously surprising, and inevitable conclusion.